Engaging a Young Audience at the Queensland Art Gallery

The Queensland Art Gallery's recent series of exhibitions aimed specifically at young children represents a dramatic shift in many of Australias leading art galleries to create a more stimulating and interactive space for children to visit. For children to be involved with the material present, the design of each exhibition is a critical factor with the height of an artwork being altered to allow children to easily view it, as well as the way the artwork is arranged in the space and importantly the use of colour. Some of the childrens exhibitions which have been held by the Queensland Art Gallery are located through this text, including a day at the beach, the Kid's APT and animals who think they are people.

More from this Issue

Children and Art

Felicity Fenner

Promised Land: Nien Schwarz

Perth International Arts Festival 2001 event The Church Gallery, Claremont

Ian McLean

Vis.Arts.Online

Art websites for Kids

Stephanie Lindquist

Letter to the Editor

Frank Bauer

Play Things: Some Contemporary Artists and their Objects

The function and materiality of the art object, when investigated by artists, often evokes a childlike sense. Be they miniatures, process-related installations or large minimalist works, these objects call upon the viewer to look at them as if for the first time. As so much contemporary art retreats from theory and aims to locate itself squarely in the everyday, the art objects social function is also more assured, bringing the artist and the audience closer together. Paradoxically, this use-effect is best achieved by artists by emphasising the dysfunction of the object and some of those who best achieve this are Paul Saint, Stephen Birch, Jean Arp, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Tom Friedman, Robert Pulie, Simryn Gill, Mikala Dwyer and David Griggs.

Russell Storer

East of Somewhere

Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney 10 March - 29 April

Kiersten Fishburn

Boyd Webb

Curated by Jenny Harper Brisbane City Gallery 8 March- 29 April 2001

Holly Arden

Teenage Riot: Representations of Adolescence in Contemporary Art

The child has always been a favoured subject for artists. Recent exhibitions both in Australia and internationally address the shift from a sanguine vision of childhood to alternative representations, where children are presented as desirable and desirous, menacing yet vulnerable, widely unpredictable and ultimately mysterious. Artistic works by Robert Gober, Ronnie Van Hout, Larry Clark, Katie Siegel, Justine Kurland, Anna Gaskell, Diane Arbus, Di Barrett, Mark McDean, Anne Ferran, Polixeni Papapetrou, Bill Henson, Pat Brissington, Tracey Moffatt, Deborah Paauwe, Mona Hatoum and Nic Nicosia all help to illuminate the complexities of adolescence, a subject of ambivalence wedged between contradictory discourses and spaces of transition.

K.P. Hall

The Archibald Prize

Art Gallery of NSW March 2001

Jo Higgins

Geoffrey Goldie: A Survey Show: 1968-2000

Drawings, Paintings, Etchings,Set & Costume Designs Gipps Street Gallery, Melbourne Nov/Dec 2000

Sam Schoenbaum

Children's Art Program at Sydney Children's Hospital

The childrens art program at Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick, has revealed that exhibitions of children's art, in the context of a child-oriented environment, are at least as significant to their target audience as art by adult professionals. The children's art program is administered by a company called Identity, Environment and Art, which specialises in developing art and cultural programs, primarily in health facilities. The plan included commissioned artworks by professional artists, murals, interactive wall panels and integrated mosaics.

Lesley Rosenberg

Focus: No Man is an Island: A Two Part Reading

Radok here recognises the issue of nationality present in the work of German artist Nikolaus Lang, an artist who often visits Australia to make field trips, to research, to make art and to exhibit. Since his first visit as a participant in the 1979 Sydney Biennale, Lang has been collaborating with Aboriginal people, as his work strongly relates to the origins of art and the origins of the materials of art, often literally the pigments that form artworks. Parts I and II discuss these facts and some of the ideas imbedded in his collaborative works with Indigenous artists Dorrie Gibson, Andrew Gibson and John Turpie.

Stephanie Radok

View all articles in this issue